Vic.ai
Harness the Power of Autonomous Accounting and Financial Insight

Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, said it best: “Machine Intelligence is the last invention that humanity will ever need to make.”

The world, as we know it, is living through a period of extraordinary change, and a big driver of this change is artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). AI and ML have become intertwined with every aspect of human lives, including business, bringing on intelligent solutions, and transforming the work processes. Over the years, the hype around AI has become intense, and understandably so. Despite the sharp increase in enterprise AI adoption, confusion lingers between a true AI and an AI-enabled company. However, while weaving AI heavily into their narrative, only a few companies have provided groundbreaking solutions to real problems.

One such company is Vic.ai—a leader in autonomous accounting and financial intelligence. Born with a singular focus on bringing the accounting industry into the next era of intelligent accounting, Vic.ai strives to improve human performance in an industry that has been drastically underserved in technology innovation. Vic.ai—a true AI company from the ground up— builds AI for real-time, autonomous enterprise accounting paired with prescriptive intelligence to optimize financial decision-making and ROI. Designed specifically for large accounting and outsourced CFO firms and corporate finance departments, Vic. ai is a cloud-based platform that helps users perform accounting work more efficiently and accurately. The platform empowers accountants, CFOs, controllers, and accounts payable (AP) teams with AI, reducing errors in invoice processing, approval workflows, and electronic payment processing. “We are not one of those companies that actually leverage tools and templates and a bunch of people in some offshore location to mimic AI. Vic.ai is an actual AI startup that delivers real AI algorithms that actually work to solve real problems,” begins Alexander Hagerup, co-founder, and CEO, Vic.ai.

At the core, autonomy and intelligence form the two key pillars that strengthen the foundation of Vic.ai’s accounts payable automation platform. In essence, the autonomy aspect involves creating AI algorithms that allow performing transactional accounting tasks and cost-side accounting autonomously by learning from clients’ data and their accounting team without human intervention. “We present a mix augmentation and complete autonomy. The longer you use our platform, the more autonomy you get. This autonomy element of the platform is all about driving and developing a technology that can reason and make decisions on its own,” says Hagerup. The unique approach to introduce autonomy in the accounting processes has been a game-changer for industries like construction that have large amounts of incoming invoices and a limited number of executives to manage them. Besides, with Vic.ai, CFOs and controllers from high-growth enterprise finance teams can keep headcount under control, increase security, and reduce costly errors due to poor internal controls. The accounts payable executives can automatically enter invoices into accounting systems for human review, in addition to allowing the AI to manage repetitive tasks, driving dramatic cost savings and profit margin improvements. Vic. ai’s clients can also expect to complete their invoicing processes and get them approved 80 percent faster than the industry standard.

The intelligence component, on the other hand, is focused on deriving valuable information from financial transactions. This real-time information enables visibility into their spending, drives better decision-making, and creates a competitive advantage with data insights. Hagerup explains that the intelligence piece can be instrumental in vendor optimizations, for instance.

We present a mix augmentation and complete autonomy. The longer you use our platform, the more autonomy you get. This autonomy element of the platform is all about driving and developing a technology that is able to reason and make decisions on its own

“We understand what the price of a commodity should be. If you are overpaying for that, we enable a structured and smart way to perform optimizations,” he adds.

Vic.ai ensures that finance teams have a successful transition to AI. In doing so, the company has built several integrations into software such as Quickbooks and Bill.com, connecting Vic.ai to key ERP/accounting systems that allow users to ingest master data and supplemental information from any ERP system via the platform’s open API and common data model. Vic.ai is deployed and connected to the client’s ERP system, whereby they can direct all of their incoming vendors’ invoices through the platform to extract, classify and communicate information within the ERP system, thereby taking over what the human components are doing today.

A Testimony of Excellence

Putting theory into practice are many success stories that Vic.ai has scripted for its clients since its inception in 2017. Hagerup cites a recent case study wherein Vic.ai’s life-changing accounts payable automation platform laid HSB’s Modern Home foundation. As a large real estate management company, HSB manages over 4,500 properties with about 300 accountants in their accounting department, who process nearly 1.5 million invoices a year. HSB’s existing scanning technology for accounts payable and straight-through processing involved manual coding and classification of every invoice, requiring an average of five to six minutes to process an invoice. In an ambitious bid to future-proof its business, the company was in dire need of innovation in its century-old back-office financial operations. This is where Vic.ai stepped in with its intelligent platform that allowed autonomous management of AP workflows with zero human touch or review.

In what was a proper validation of success, Vic.ai drastically reduced HSB’s average invoice processing time to 30 seconds per invoice. With over 200 HSB employees using Vic.ai, the client was able to save more than 25,000 hours in a year—the massive amount of time that the finance employees can now use for more important business aspects, such as corporate strategy, real estate needs, and capital investments.

Similar success stories demonstrate the value of meaningful technology that Vic.ai brings to the table. The company draws on its dynamic team's rich experience and expertise of leading AI engineers, who have spent the last five years meticulously engineering a state-of-the-art solution. With a vision to produce measurable results for clients along their AI journey, Vic.ai looks forward to expanding its market in both Europe and the US while also focusing on augmenting the capabilities of the AI engine and the platform at large.